


Cascade

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, AmeriHawk, Awkward Flirting, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Sam Wilson, DISASTER STEVE, F/M, M/M, disaster Clint, meet awkward, soft, softest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22721884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: Clint keeps running into Steve. Literally.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Comments: 43
Kudos: 254





	Cascade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flowerparrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day!!!!
> 
> Now beta read by the amazing Ro!!!

Playing frisbee in the Park with Natasha was a lot like some kind of dangerous, extreme sport where the loser faced summary execution.

Then again, that was pretty much the description of  _ anything  _ Natasha and Clint did together. So it wasn’t like frisbee was special. 

But, well… it was an unseasonably warm day, it hadn’t rained or snowed in over a week, the sun was out, and the Park was crowded.

So when Natasha made a throw that Clint could have easily caught  _ maybe  _ if he was some kind of superhero, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Clint collided with someone after sprinting to a park bench and jumping off it to achieve the correct altitude to catch the damn frisbee.

Clint kind of tackle/landed on the poor bastard - but he  _ had  _ caught the frisbee - suck it, Nat.

And they’d landed in the grass, not on the paved path several feet away, which… would have been awful.

So, instead, Clint was straddling a very attractive man with blue eyes that looked more intense than Nat’s own eyes at her most focused and… holy hell, the guy was like a science experiment engineered to represent white, western masculine perfection.

They stared at each other for… longer than they should have, probably, but then Clint remembered to attempt to be a functional human.

He scrambled off the guy and got to his feet and then held out his hand.

The guy took it, allowing Clint to haul him up - and show off, so what? - and fuck  _ off,  _ Natasha, because Clint could hear her laughing from all the way wherever the fuck she was.

“Sorry about that,” Clint said, and tried for a sympathetic, apologetic smile.

“Dangers of jogging on a sunny day,” the guy shrugged, full lips curved upwards just the slightest bit and-

Yeah.

Clint looked him over - for injuries, because, you know, that was a thing. 

The guy was wearing tight, short jogging/legging somethings like what Natasha wore sometimes, and Clint hadn’t seen a guy wear anything like that outside of bicycle racing, and he wondered why the  _ fuck  _ more guys didn’t do that. And he had on a shirt, or some kind of excuse for one. It had clearly belonged to the guy before he hit puberty and expanded to his current state of… being.

Damn. Maybe Clint should take up jogging.

“And of playing frisbee with Natasha,” Clint added, because he should say something instead of just  _ staring _ . He gestured towards the red-haired woman of death and danger standing all the way over-

Oh. She was striding up to them, casual and amused, and Clint knew his life was about to get  _ awful  _ because he had seen Natasha with that exact expression on her face before and it did not end well for him. Ever.

“Hey!” the guy greeted Natasha with a hug and- and Natasha didn’t dismember him. In fact, she hugged him back.

Clint stared at them, holding the frisbee and feeling like he’d missed not just a page but maybe a decade.

Natasha pulled away from the guy’s embrace still smirking - still the smirk of doom - and looked between Clint and the guy.

“Steve, this is my roommate, Clint. Clint, this is Steve from work.”

Steve from work.

Steve from-

_ Oh _ .

The hot security guy who had tried to flirt with Natasha and failed miserably and now blushed every time she looked at him but still grabbed lunch with her sometimes and made her laugh and was, according to Natasha ‘I hate everyone and everything except for my cat and Clint Barton on Tuesdays’, a decent guy.

Steve held out his hand to Clint, still smiling, and Clint shook it.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said. “Nat’s told me a lot about you.”

And that-

That was - always had been, always would be - the scariest sentence in the English language.

Clint looked from Steve to Natasha, and she was  _ still smirking  _ .

“Same,” Clint managed, scrambling through his memory in the vain hope there was  _ anything  _ Natasha might have told Steve about him that wasn’t five different kinds of awful and embarrassing.

And… they were still shaking hands.

“So, Steve, we were about to grab lunch, want to join us?” Natasha asked, announcing plans Clint had previously been completely unaware of.

Her invitation somehow inspired Steve to finally let go of Clint’s hand.

“I, uh, I’ve actually got to… run,” he said, and flushed, and oh  _ God,  _ he was too adorable to live on this planet.

Natasha’s smirk wobbled, caught between doom and amusement.

“No worries,” she said, voice bright and brisk. “I’ll see you at work on Monday.”

Steve nodded, blue eyes sliding over her and back to Clint.

He licked his lips, and Clint committed that sight to memory.

“I, uh, guess I’ll see you around?” Steve offered.

Clint nodded, a lot.

“Yeah. I’ll try not to crash into you next time.”

Steve smiled, and that was so very, very worth Clint feeling like the idiot that he was.

And then Steve was giving a dorky little wave and turning and jogging off and his  _ ass in those shorts _ .

“Want me to record this for you?” Natasha offered.

“Shut up,” Clint growled, and then started to run because he knew Natasha, and yep, sure enough, he didn’t get more than twenty yards before she tackled him and tickled him until he was crying and begging for mercy.

-o-

As luck or fate or whatever hated him most would have it, the next time Clint saw Steve, he  _ did  _ crash into him.

Natasha worked for some law firm - did something with contract law and negotiations and… things that Clint knew were very important and were only slightly boring to Natasha, so clearly required someone to be brilliant to do them.

The law firm was the fancy kind, with quarterly retreats for their partners and big bonuses and fancy,  _ fancy  _ parties. 

And since Natasha had very unwavering feelings about humanity and dating, Clint had the dubious pleasure of being her on-call plus one to said fancy events.

Which explained how he found himself in a three piece suit and a bowtie - a  _ bowtie,  _ for fuck’s sake - dancing probably way too enthusiastically and definitely too aggressively in the crowd of mid-level associates who were clustered together on the dance floor to avoid the groping hands and judgemental eyes of the senior partners all clustered around the open bar and food buffet tables.

It was someone’s birthday - founder, co-founder, former chair - something. Natasha had tossed him a garment bag and said there would be free food and free booze and a foot massage coming his way, and really, she could have been telling him to suit up for a journey to Mordor and he would have done it. Free food, alcohol and massage not included. 

Natasha had let him run off to the dance floor to have fun - and he was having fun, currently sandwiched between Peter Parker and Kate Bishop, both too young for his tastes but clearly invested in dancing like they were at a club and not a ballroom at the Four Seasons. Natasha had introduced the two kids to him not long after they arrived at the ‘party’ - and Clint was pretty sure he’d been to no fewer than six funerals that were more lively than this thing - and Natasha had encouraged him to run along and have fun. 

So. Clint was having fun.

Right up until the moment he felt someone touch his shoulder and he spun around, flushed and a bit sweaty and three rum and cokes in, and- and crashed into Steve.

Steve caught him, and  _ fuck,  _ that was… some kind of something to feel all his biceps and triceps and pecs and-

“Hey,” Steve said, grinning at him.

“Hey,” Clint responded, breathless from the dancing and not from the sight of Steve in a fitted black suit and black bowtie, hair combed and jaw clean and smooth and-

Clint made himself stand upright, under his own power.

“Sorry,” he said, because yeah, he’d crashed into Steve  _ again _ .

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said, still grinning.

“Wanna dance?” Clint asked, since they were on the dance floor and… and he’d never been good at small talk. It was why Natasha let him run off and ‘play’ while she did the wine and dine thing with the senior partners. Clint knew he was handsome, knew he was good arm candy for her, but they  _ both  _ knew Clint had no brain-to-mouth filter at the best of times and socializing with the high and mighty was definitely the worst of times.

“Uh, no, I’m- awful at it.” Steve blushed, and that, that was a damn good look on him.

Clint nodded and gestured towards the bar.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, and together they made their way off the dance floor and towards the bar.

“It’s cool you got an invite to the party,” Clint said, because from all the shit Clint had seen of the partners and what Natasha came home to complain about, he didn’t think they were the kind of people to invite a security guard for the building they had offices in to the birthday party for… someone.

Steve snorted.

“I didn’t. I’m Sam’s plus one.”

Sam…

Sam Wilson, junior partner, apparently thinks he’s the shit and, according to Natasha, he  _ is  _ the shit, and one of her five hobbies at work is watching Sam routinely school the mediocre white men around him who think they are better by virtue of their lack of melanin alone. 

“I thought he was straight,” Clint said, getting on a roll with demonstrating just how lacking that filter truly was.

Steve’s face did something complicated, but eventually, he settled on just nodding.

“Yeah. He’s, uh, pretty gone on Nat.”

Which was the conclusion Clint had reached as well, from two interactions and countless stories.

And then he remembered that Steve had tried to flirt with Natasha, once upon a time.

He winced.

“Sorry,” he said.

Steve raised an eyebrow.

“About, you know, Sam going after Natasha when you…” Clint waved his hand, not really knowing what to say.

Steve looked amused.

“I’ve recovered,” Steve said after letting Clint suffer in silence for way too long.

They finally got to the front of the line at the bar, ordered their drinks - another rum and coke for Clint, because  _ he  _ didn’t have work tomorrow and he had access to Natasha’s miracle hangover cure - and a vodka tonic for Steve.

Without communicating, they drifted towards the edge of the ballroom, where the music wasn’t as loud and they had a decent view of the party.

They stood there, quiet and… awkward, that was definitely the word for it.

Clint watched Natasha float through the crowds, charming and terrifying in turn. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining the way her gaze lingered on Sam Wilson, seated at a table and not quite arguing but definitely proving a point to a balding man who looked scandalized to be addressed however Sam was addressing him.

“So,” Steve said, and Clint turned his focus back to him.

Steve stared at him

Clint waited.

“Yeah, I didn’t have anything to add to that, I just wanted you to look at me again,” Steve admitted, and immediately blushed.

At least they could be filterless together, Clint decided, and grinned.

“Just say the word, Steve. I like looking at you.”

Steve’s blush grew more intense, and Clint… Hell, Clint was pretty sure there was nothing Steve could do that Clint wasn’t going to find adorable or sexy or some combination of both, and what the  _ fuck was wrong with him _ ?

“Can I take you out to dinner?” Steve asked, and Clint didn’t know why he bothered to phrase it as a question when he was pretty sure he was being very obvious about broadcasting his ‘like me,  _ please  _ ’ feelings.

“Don’t want to risk bumping into me accidentally again?” Clint teased, because he could do that - he’d lived with Natasha long enough to add that to his skillset.

“That’s fine with me too,” Steve assured him, entirely sincere.

Yeah, Clint was  _ not  _ equipped to deal with that.

“Anything you want,” Clint said, and realized he might, probably, actually mean that.

Steve grinned.

“I want dinner. With you. Soon.”

Clint nodded.

“Yeah. Same. This weekend?”

Steve didn’t answer; instead, he looked away from Clint, and as much as that sucked, Clint made himself follow Steve’s gaze.

To where Sam and Natasha were now dancing together.

Aw. Adorable. Those two were going to hatch beautiful plans to conquer the world together.

“How’s tonight?” Steve asked.

It took Clint a moment to focus - Natasha happy wasn’t something he saw often enough to be able to easily turn away from it.

“Tonight’s great,” he decided, taking in Steve’s slightly uncertain smile and still flushed cheeks.

“Great,” Steve agreed.

-o-

  
  



End file.
